At the very beginning of 2022, South Korean tech giant Samsung announced its foray into the metaverse and a new “NFT Aggregation Platform” designed for its smart TVs. In addition to the NFT TVs, Samsung also launched a virtual experience inside of Decentraland, one of the most popular metaverse gaming platforms. It’s high time we had a peek at the South Korean NFT world to see the latest developments.
Samsung NFT TV and Presence in Decentraland
The idea of the metaverse is no longer the distant, dreamy vision shared only among a limited number of crypto veterans it once was. From the moment Facebook re-invented itself as “Meta,” a few more tech giants around the world followed in the company’s footsteps and made some bold movements to venture into the metaverse space.
On January 18, 2022, Microsoft announced the acquisition of Activision Blizzard for a valuation of $68.7 billion USD in an all-cash transaction. Half a month before that, the South Korean tech giant and conglomerate group Samsung Electronics announced three brand new TV models for 2022 that host an “intuitive, integrated platform for discovering, purchasing and trading digital artwork”.
On January 6, 2022, Samsung’s official launch in the metaverse, the Samsung 837X Opening Event opened its doors for Decentraland residents as part of the CES 2022 interactive event. During the three days of the launch event, Decentraland residents who visited and participated in the quests were able to collect four NFT badges inside the experience. They visited various landscapes, watched Samsung promotional videos, enjoyed the DJ concerts, and at the end of the process participated in a competition to win three different levels of exclusive Samsung wearable NFTs.
Though the special launch event is over, the Samsung 837X virtual experience in Decentraland still remains open to everybody as a nice promotion and a reminder of future events. Inside the Samsung 837X building, the three individual experiences — Connectivity Theater, Customization Stage, and Sustainability Forest — showcased how a commercial brand could utilize the Web 3.0 metaverse space to create an interactive and fun experience for engaging with audiences and consumers, as opposed to the old-fashioned outdoor billboards or online advertising which Web 2.0 users got so tired of.
From time to time, I read many concerns of people who are enthusiastic about the metaverse. Some of them fear that the future of major metaverse gaming experiences might be full of giant corporations from our reality which have purchased a massive amount of land and stuffed it all with tasteless and ugly advertisements. Samsung, among a few other global brands who became the first to dive in, at least seems to be trying to set a good example and standard for how their metaverse experience should be engaging and sincere toward the metaverse generation.
South Korean NFT Market and Becoming a Leading Force in the Metaverse
On January 13, the CEO of South Korean crypto exchange Bithumb, Heo Baek-young, said in an interview that the exchange was in process of developing an NFT exchange that would help the company “stay competitive” with other domestic Korean exchanges. Korean media also reported that the NFT exchange developed by Bithumb is likely to be backed by LG, the local and global competitor of Samsung in electronic devices and smart device manufacturing. Will the future Bithumb NFT exchange become a convenient and major NFT exchange for South Korean NFT artists? Likely.
Coming before this launch of an NFT exchange developed by an influential crypto exchange, there are already some independent South Korean NFT websites trying to promote a number of Korean NFT artists and their artworks.
Disclaimer: These are the writer’s opinions and should not be considered investment advice. Readers should do their own research.
